Our Documents
America's great historic documents, on crystal-clear view on the Web!
Grade Level: 6-8, 9-12, Advanced
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/
CONTENT: Our Documents contains a collection of almost thirty primary documents from the National Archives that "reflect our diversity and our unity, our past and our future, and mostly our commitment as a nation to continue to strive to form a more perfect union". Three new documents are added each week.
AESTHETICS: The site is bright and colorful with wide borders. A printer-friendly version of each page is available.
ORGANIZATION: Links to the various areas of the site are displayed as buttons on the main page. Subsequent pages have a top navigation bar. The document titles are listed chronologically in an index.
REVIEW: Teachers and the general public will find primary documents here that chronicle the history of the United States from 1776-1965. Twenty-seven documents are already published, with three additional ones added each week. Eventually there will be a repository of one hundred documents. Each document includes information about the document, a large view of the document scan, the document transcript, and a printer-friendly .pdf file. A few of the milestone documents already published include The Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Bill of Rights, and the Monroe Doctrine. Teachers will find links to resources for teaching with the documents. An Educator's Sourcebook is in the development stage. There are also teacher and student competitions available.
